James turned on Kay, all his horror and fear and pain pouring out through his words. “How could you do this? How could you bring her here?”
Riley gasped, but he couldn’t make himself stop.
“All I wanted was for her to be safe,” he roared. “All this time, I kept her out of it. I kept her away from Gordon—and now you’ve thrown her right at him.”
“Stop it.” Riley’s voice cut into him. God. She had moved, and now she was standing directly behind him, but he couldn't make himself look at her. He hung his pounding head, wrapping his hands behind his neck.
“It wasn’t Kay’s decision,” Riley stated firmly. “It was mine. We all heard the message Gordon left on your phone, and—”
“How…? Never mind.” Shit. He should have known they’d break his lock code, especially since it was the date he first realized exactly who Riley was to him. The moment he realized that everything he wanted was right in front of him. Before it all went to shit, and he’d had to accept he would never have her.
“We had to stop you from making a huge mistake,” Riley said from behind him. “You didn’t know Emma had destroyed the blood Shadows. By going back to Gordon, you were giving him exactly what he wanted.” Riley’s voice grew calmer. Cooler. Falling into a Healer’s practiced cadence. As if she was explaining something to a difficult patient.
It was a tone that told him exactly how little respect she had for him now. Like he was a child. Or someone she’d treated in the clinic. Not the man she’d held in her arms. Not the lover she’d welcomed into her body.
His head was really pounding now, shafts of bright pain were splintering behind his eyes. The world rocked and spun unpleasantly as he twisted to look at her over his shoulder, his voice far sharper than he intended. “I’m not a complete idiot. Obviously Gordon only wanted me for my blood.”
“But then….” Riley let out a huff of shocked breath. “Hell. You poisoned yourself!”
He crossed his arms over his chest and kept his mouth shut as he backed away to lean against the wall and glare at them all. If he didn’t lean on something, he was going to fall down, and he didn’t want any of them to see how weak and pathetic he was. Especially not Riley.
There was no point in defending himself. Nothing he could say would make this conversation any better.
“Why would you do that, James? You could have killed yourself! God.” Kay’s horror grated on his nerves, as did the stark look on Zach and Riley’s faces.
“James?” Emma was the only one who looked at him with any kind of empathy. Everyone else just looked appalled. And outraged.
“The Council was going to come after me eventually,” he admitted, focusing on his cousin. “I was much happier being in control of how that happened. I didn’t want Gordon to be the one….” He let the words fade without saying the rest. “Anyway,” he said instead, “I knew he couldn’t use my blood if I poisoned it.”
“But why go back to him?” Riley asked roughly. “I don’t understand.”
Finally, James met her eyes. Her irises were jade—almost exactly the color of her Shadows—with golden flecks around the pupils. Full of intelligence and wit. And usually so much kindness. Now she just looked confused, disappointed, and more than a little angry.
He fought to hold her gaze through the final blow he was about to deliver to whatever they might have had between them. He’d done bad things before, but for those he could claim duress, argue that he had been manipulated and tortured by the blood Shadows. But not for this. This cold-blooded decision was all his. “I went back,” he murmured, “because it was my only chance to kill Gordon.”
ChapterFive
Riley lay on her back,looking up at faded paint. The ceiling was a slightly yellowed white, and there was a strand of spiderweb stretching from the pair of wicker chairs in the corner up to the cornice. She’d already spent far too long watching it sway in the draft coming in through the open window and wondering where the spider was.
It was better to think about the spider than to think about James. And spiders had never worried her. They were merely little creatures going about their business.
She had grown up with spiders. The livestock her parents kept. And squirrels. Hares too. The occasional roe deer. Living on a smallholding in the Scottish Borders in a ramshackle old farmhouse with no one else to speak to for hours at a time had given her a deep appreciation for the living creatures of the earth. The sheep, goats, chickens, birds, and yes, even the spiders, had been her friends. She had grown to know them, their bright energies, and vibrant souls. For a time, she’d thought she might like to be a wildlife vet.
Her parents were both Healers. They’d gone to a Duine university together—the first in their entire Circle, let alone families, to study outside the Order—and then volunteered in the field, helping victims of conflict around the world.
They’d wanted to step outside the confines of the Order, to provide their skills and care to everyone… but they’d seen too much.
Their successes had left them with an ever-increasing mountain of patients—and an ever-increasing fear of revealing their abilities—in some of the most terrifying places in the world.
One and then the other, they both burnt out. And then they’d fled to the hilly, wild reaches of the Scottish Borders, retreating into the safety of isolation… and had a child. Her.
They’d turned their back on their youthful hopes and committed to the old ways. To secrecy and paranoia. To getting up with the dawn and sleeping with the sunset. To avoiding the lights and distractions of the city. Or even the nearby village. And staying far away from the online world and its twisting tunnels of social media.
They worked with the local animals, lived off-grid, and raised their only child with a distracted, worried kind of adoration. They loved her, but they didn’t really know her. They didn’t see that she might need the very experiences they’d shut away completely. They wanted her safe, and, to them, that meant keeping her at home. Keeping her out of the local Duine schools. Keeping her alone.
Riley once heard it said that a person is a person because of other people. And she had felt that, deeply. But her parents only wanted their family. And they wanted it to stay within the confines of their prison of safety.
As she got older, she felt more and more strongly that she needed a different life. Her obsession with animals faded and she became increasingly certain that her calling was to be a Healer too.
